Play Again?
by Convenient Alias
Summary: When Spider-man dies in battle, instead of staying dead he discovers that he is part of a videogame that allows him to reset and come back to life a couple minutes in the past. What will he do upon finding out his entire life is a videogame, and is there a way for him to win?
1. The First Restart

AN: This story was written for a challenge from NarutoUzumakiBarrage on the Spider-man challenges forum. The challenge was that Peter had to realize he was part of a game after he died and discovered he could begin again-reset. It's not my usual thing, but I thought it sounded like an interesting challenge and someone should give it a go. that said, I don't play too many videogames. If someone notices something going wrong with my story or has advice, I would love for them to mention it in a review or message.

Here's hoping it works out!

* * *

A lot of people talked about Spider-man. They said a lot of stupid stuff, like how he might be evil and how he did an awful lot of property damage.

One thing they never discussed was how he really should have been dead.

Seriously, he'd gone up against ridiculously strong opponents. And while he only ever tried to defeat them and put them in jail, most of them had actively been trying to kill him rather than beat him up. And quite a few of them had been very strong.

The reason why people never talked about this was quite simple-no one ever notices the way the game is programmed while they're inside it.

On the other hand, Spider-man had noticed it very often himself. But he didn't need to wonder about why no one had ever managed to kill him because he already knew. And it wasn't because of his amazing skills either.

The best thing he had going for him wasn't his strength, or his spider senses, or being able to climb up walls. It was the fact that he was the player.

He had the ability to restart.

/…/…/

It happened for the first time when he first went up against the Vulture.

It was pathetic, really. The Vulture was the first real supervillain he ever went up against. He thought he was prepared. He wasn't. He was just a high schooler and the Vulture had been doing this for years.

The Vulture was vicious and quick. The fight was completely one sided-he'd been distracted by trying to take pictures and hadn't known he'd even been spotted yet. The Vulture hit him over the head easily and dumped him, dazed and only half conscious, into a water tower, closing the door behind him.

It ended with him drowning in the water tower, wondering how he'd managed to fall for such a stupid trick like the vulture swooping up behind him. In his last moments, he was cursing his own idiocy. Now he would never be able to save enough lives to make up for his failure in letting Uncle Ben die.

Drowning was painful, water rushing through his nose and filling his lungs. He was almost too distracted to hear the voice. It seemed to come from above. It was a blank voice, like that of a recording or a computer. "Game Over. Game Over. Game Over…"

He thought sourly to himself that if he had to have a hallucination as he died, he wished it could be something a little more comforting than this.

Then there was a flash of white light in his vision, and a moment of darkness, and just when he started wondering if darkness was all there was to the afterlife, he heard a voice again.

It was a deeper voice this time, very matter of fact and a bit more human, but still very programmed.

"Game over. You have lost the game. Play again?"

Peter didn't think too hard about it. He didn't know what was going on exactly, and he was bewildered, but he had never been a quitter. He didn't ask questions. He didn't debate what would happen to him either way. He just said, "Yes."

There was another moment of blackness and then, suddenly, he was dropping into the freezing cold water of the water tower all over again. He was confused, frightened, had no idea what was happening.

But he thought to himself, "This is your chance."

Was he going to let a stupid water container beat him again? Of course not!

This time, he sprang into action immediately. He dove deep under the water until he found the bottom, and then pushed off the bottom to spring to the surface. Indeed, he put so much force into the spring that he ended up with his upper body sticking out of the entrance to the water tank that the Vulture had shoved him through.

Air.

So much air. He gasped it in, nearly choking out of the sheer vigor with which he inhaled. He wasn't going to drown, he wasn't going to die. Not today, and certainly not here. Not at the Vulture's hands either.

When he went against the Vulture later, he felt somehow stronger. Maybe his near death experience had made him so? It didn't matter. What mattered was that soon, the Vulture was left on the ground with a pair of ruined wings, being arrested by the authorities.

And what he felt was triumph, of course, and satisfaction at seeing the man get what he deserved. Not relief. He had no reason to fear the Vulture, after all.

He was alive.

Later that night, he got good money from J. Jonah Jameson for pictures of the Vulture and Spider-man, and that was when he first started bringing in pictures to the Daily Bugle for money. If he had stopped to think then, he might have realized how very like a game it was- getting items on an adventure and exchanging the for money. But he was too tired, and he only half remembered what had happened when he drowned.

He didn't think too hard about it. Not then. He was too happy at his survival.

He went home and had dinner with Aunt May. He surprised her with the money. She said she was proud of him.

He went to bed and forgot about the whole near-death experience thing for five whole days before disaster struck again.

/…/…/

The second time was even lamer than the first.

Spider-man was supposed to be powerful and strong. He had accepted the risks of fighting supervillains and the like, but dying of a simple gunshot to his heart?

It was lame for a superhero, being defeated by a simple gang of thugs like this. He should have sensed the bullet coming towards him, should have been able to dodge on time. He was distracted and ended up getting hit.

He was lying on the ground of the alley where they'd been fighting, now, his blood staining the sidewalk. Vaguely he heard the thugs talking over his body, some triumphant, some worried. He wondered how they would dispose of his body, if they'd take his mask off to see his face or just leave it on, uncurious.

"Game Over. Game Over. Game Over…"

What. He knew that blank, computer like voice. Only, he had thought it was some kind of strange hallucination to go with his near death experience. Was he hallucinating again?

He tried to pull his head up to look around for the source of the voice, but as he looked up he was blinded by a flash of white light. And then, utter darkness.

Ooh, déjà vu.

Peter was kind of annoyed at the fact that he had just thought that. It was fine to be snarky when he was fighting criminals and the like, but he had just died. Didn't his inner voice have any sense of gravity?

Was there such a thing as gravity after death?

Come to think of it, did he still have a body? He felt like he did. He could still move around and he could probably still talk but he couldn't feel anything around him. His inner science student was fascinated.

His fascination was interrupted by the second voice.

"Game over. You have lost the game. Play again?"

This time, already in science mode, Peter hesitated.

If he said yes, maybe things would reset to a few minutes before, like last time. Surely that would be satisfactory. But Peter felt curious.

Maybe curiosity killed the cat, but it also discovered heliocentrism, so Peter felt entirely justified in investigating his situation instead of immediately accepting the offer to "play again".

Now. The whole "Game Over" and "Play again" thing suggested that this…phenomenon was part of a game. Peter was skeptical, but a lot of his life had been like a game of late. Fighting people, facing impossible odds. He supposed it would make sense.

The voice suggested something further to him…a videogame. Peter had never played many of them himself, but he had played enough to know the basics. He would therefore try to deal with the situation like it was a videogame, and hope he didn't end up getting himself killed for real.

"Um," he said aloud. "Options?"

The deep voice spoke again, placidly and mechanically. "If you choose to play again, you will start from save point. You may also go to Stats to see your current stats, restart the game from the beginning, when you first became a superhero, or go back to the save point before your most recent one. Other options include changing gender, costume and abilities, and adding background music, but first you will have to build your stats. Or you can quit."

Peter took a moment to process this.

Okay, more than a moment.

The quit option was out. Peter was pretty sure that would lead to him dying for real, forever, and he had an aunt to go back to. The options that required additional stats sounded interesting but apparently he couldn't access them. Restarting from when he first became a superhero sounded interesting but not really worth it. He had no huge regrets, since he had only become a superhero after Uncle Ben was already dead, which meant he could not go back and change that. All in all, he probably wanted to play again from his current save point, wherever that was, but first, he was still curious.

"Current stats, please."

He half expected to see them appear in front of him, but they didn't. Instead, the voice spoke again.

"Strength is at 80. Agility is at 90. Accuracy is at 60. Health has total of 230 but is currently at 0. Intelligence is at 130. Special skills-wall crawling and spider sense. Wall crawling is at 70. Spider sense is at 40."

"Oh," said Peter.

Well, great. He knew what his stats were now, but he had no idea how to interpret them.

In any case, his lowest one was spider sense, so apparently he had to improve there. It made sense, since not using it enough had led to his being shot in the first place.

He was still confused, but the voice wasn't offering any more information so there was really only one thing left to do without stretching this.

"Restart," he said, in the calmest voice he could manage. "From last save point."

There was a low buzz, and suddenly Peter could see again. He was back in the alley, sticking to the wall, about to attack the thugs, who were just coming out of a jewelry store. He hesitated for only a moment before swinging down, his feet hitting one man in the head.

"Hello," he said brightly. "Just your friendly neighborhood Spider-man swinging through. I was wondering if you guys might be interested in a sparring match."

This time he didn't get shot. He made sure of it, forcing himself to listen to every urge his spider senses gave him. He found himself doing meaningless movements that ended up being useful in the end, practically dancing around blows that had only just started to come down.

He wondered vaguely why he hadn't done it this way the first time.

The thugs were left in a tapestry of webbing for the police to find, and soon Peter was home again. Aunt May was concerned at his being late. For a moment he felt guilty at almost being killed (or had he been killed?) and leaving her for good. He forced himself to let the feeling go. There was nothing he could do about it.

Trying to fall asleep, he couldn't stop thinking about the blackness, the option to play again, the game, the stats. His curiosity was nearly driving him mad. He should have figured out how to ask for more information. Most games had a "How to Play" section. Next time he would definitely ask to see that.

Wait.

Next time?

Peter lay in bed, shocked, as he realized that he had just made the assumption that he was going to die again. Was he an idiot? He wouldn't let himself die again. That would be stupid.

And yet in the end, he still had a feeling in his gut, almost like spider sense. He was going to be killed again. And soon.

* * *

AN: So. Hope you enjoyed that. As I said, I've never written a story much like this before, but I'm doing my best. Next chapter: Peter tries to figure out just what is going on, maybe fights a villain or two, and has a talk with Flash. Not necessarily in that order.


	2. Ponderings and Octopi

After school, Peter usually did one of two things: homework, or running around as Spider-man, fighting crime and shooting webs. The day after he died the second time, he decided to do neither.

Instead, he took out a new notebook and a pencil and started making notes on his situation, like any scientist would. He first wrote down an account of the two times he had died (or at least, the two times he had found himself in the whole "play again" situation) and read through it. Then he tried to figure out exactly what he was up against.

"Hypothesis: I am a player in some kind of videogame."

He paused. It was ridiculous, but it made some kind of sense. Unless...He put down a note below. "Alternative hypothesis: A supervillain is messing with my mind." But if he believed that every time something strange happened, he would get paranoid quick. "Assume first hypothesis is correct until presented with contradictory evidence."

He paused. It was a pretty strange hypothesis to assume was correct. He half wanted to cross those words out and work off the second hypothesis.

On the other hand, being resurrected after clearly drowning was pretty strange too.

He continued writing. "Questions: Will I continue being 'reset' no matter how I die? How do the stats work? Are there other players? Who made the game? Is there a way to win it?"

He scowled down at the paper. A whole lot of questions and zero answers. Not the kind of thing he liked to write. Still, he supposed it would be interesting to find out the answers if he could, so perhaps it wouldn't be so bad.

"Additional Notes: Do not get yourself killed just to get further information! Idiot!"

He was calling himself an idiot, but it would be an idiotic thing to do, and he was very tempted to do it.

Sighing, he closed the notebook and put on his Spider-man suit. With this many questions in his head, there was no way he would be able to do homework. Patrolling the city would get his more complicated problems (such as whether he existed in reality or a computer program) out of his mind.

/…/…/

Peter really wished he could figure out who to talk to about this. Like, the world was a videogame! What was he supposed to do about it?

It wasn't like he could just walk up to someone and say, "Oh hey, I died the other day and I'm beginning to believe the world in which we exist is actually a videogame. So…anything like that ever happen to you?" Not unless he wanted to end up in an asylum.

Wouldn't that be an interesting cover, though? If he was a certified lunatic, no one would suspect he was actually a superhero! Well…except J. Jonah Jameson and his ilk. Which was more people than he would have liked to believe.

Actually, it would be easier to count the people who didn't at least partially think Spider-man was insane. Peter could only really think of one, namely Flash Thompson.

And Flash probably wasn't the best judge of sanity.

In any case, patrolling was all very well but he couldn't do it all the time. For one thing, he had classes. And he was having more than a little trouble concentrating in them.

Then at lunch, for some reason Flash sat down next to him.

"Okay Parker," Flash declared seriously. "Where were you in class today?"

Peter was surprised. He had been in class today actually, hadn't snuck off to fight supervillains or just plain old regular villains even once. He had most definitely been in class and said so, adding, "Maybe you should get a pair of glasses."

"Not what I meant, bookworm boy," Flash retorted. "You didn't answer even one question in class. Usually you answer all of them. No one else was able to answer any of them, and it was strange. Even the teacher noticed. What's going on in your head?"

Peter was annoyed. Honestly, for once he didn't answer questions in class. Did it need to be a big issue?

He pondered about what kind of answer would bewilder Flash enough to leave him alone, and eventually decided there was nothing more puzzling than the truth.

"Well, I was thinking," he said in a sarcastic tone. "What if we're all actually players in a videogame? How would we know? And if we did know, what would we do about it?"

Instead of looking puzzled, Flash's face brightened. "Heh. Here I thought you were thinking about rocket science and I was going to have to knock some sense into your bookwormish brain. But that is a real problem."

"Rocket science is also very real," Peter protested. "It's actually used in real life, unlike that purely hypothetical situation." Which wasn't actually that hypothetical, but there was no need for Flash to know about that.

"Oh, shut up," Flash said distractedly. "This is more interesting. I forgive you for thinking about it in science class and making us take up your job."

"Well, thank goodness," Peter said. "If I didn't have your forgiveness, I'm not sure how I would deal."

This time, Flash completely ignored his remark. Instead he said, "So, videogames? Guess a nerd like you wouldn't know what to do at all. Well, you probably wouldn't notice until something out of the ordinary happened-Like, if you died and reset with memories or if someone hacked into the game and messed with it."

Wow. Peter had not thought of that. What if someone hacked reality? It was a frightening thought.

"Anyways, that part's boring," Flash said dismissively. "You wouldn't know until you knew."

Peter would have liked to object that drowning had not been boring at all, but there were obvious reasons not to, so he kept his mouth firmly shut. Besides, this was getting interesting. He should have known to go to an idiot for advice about videogames.

"But once you knew," Flash said, a smirk beginning to grow on his face. "Obviously, you'd try to win."

"How would you know how to win?" Peter asked.

Flash frowned. "Ask other players. Or find the instructions. Shouldn't be too hard. A game's always centered on how to win."

Peter nodded. "Hmm. Go on."

Flash grinned. "Oh, the genius actually likes what I'm saying? Well, then, once you'd figured out how the game worked, you'd use the rules to your advantage, level up as quickly as possible, defeat everyone else, collect all necessary prizes, and win."

"Um," Peter said blinking. Actually, now that Flash had voiced it, it seemed pretty obvious. If he was a part of a videogame, the obvious answer was to win.

"So," Flash said, standing up to go sit with his usual crowd. "You good, or are you actually going to start daydreaming about rocket science now?"

Peter, who was already thinking about different ways that could possibly be how to win the game, did not answer.

Flash glared at him and stomped off to flirt with Liz Allen. Nerds. They had no gratitude.

/…/…/

Only a week later Peter was battling Doc Ock for the first time, because his life was a videogame which apparently meant that he would never get a break.

Since he had never had much of a brain-to-mouth filter, he told his current foe about it. "Do you know how exhausting it is to be a player in a videogame? I never catch a break! Every night I fight gangsters and thugs! Once a week some supervillain comes out of nowhere and there's never anyone around to defeat you guys but me! There better be a really good reward for winning this game. At the very least, my stats should rise for defeating you!"

Doc Ock laughed crazily. "You fool! You'll never beat me! My mechanical arms are at least twice as strong as yours!"

And he didn't even remark on the videogame comments, remaining fixated on the insinuation he would lose. Peter didn't get villains. He wondered whether they were also players of the game, or just programmed challenges. He wondered if Doc Ock even knew. Probably not.

Truth to tell, though, Peter was indeed worried about his chances of winning. Doc Ock was probably the strongest villain he'd ever fought. There was so much power in the swings of his unnatural metal arms, and so many of them that it was hard to keep track. Worse yet, they meant that he had trouble reaching Doc Ock to hit him. He decided that Doc Ock was probably a boss in the videogame. He was getting worried. If he got killed he would have a chance to redo the battle, but even if he had a chance to redo it, would he ever be able to beat someone this strong?

Distracted by his thoughts, he let one of the metal arms hit him squarely in the chest. He went flying back into a wall. They were fighting in a hospital room where Doc Ock had taken one of the doctors as a hostage, so there wasn't enough room for Peter to do his typical kind of fighting. He hated fighting in enclosed spaces; one of the reasons being just this-he didn't like being bashed into walls.

He thought fast. As he hit the wall (oof) he put his feet back against it and ended up standing parallel to the wall. Which was a bit bizarre, he had to admit. The laws of physics (gravity!) meant that even if he could stick to the wall, his whole body should still have been falling towards the ground. He should at least be having a bit more trouble to stand at this angle. Yet another reason it made sense that his life was a videogame.

Doc Ock was trying to hit him down off the wall. Ignoring the laws of physics, he started dancing to avoid the blows, which were raining down crazily. He couldn't help thinking it a bit unfair that he had only two arms to try to hit Doc Ock while Doc Ock had six, and was all too enthusiastic about wielding them.

"No need to be so eager!" he shouted. "Haste makes waste!" Indeed, if Doc Ock thought a bit more about his tactics, how he was fighting, Peter was sure he would have already been defeated. It was the scientist's haste that was keeping him from killing Peter. That and his insanity. His insanity probably wasn't helping his strategizing either.

"You're crazy!" he shouted. "And your techniques are horrible! Are you sure you were ever a scientist? Think of all the ways you could use those arms to win! And you're just flailing them around madly, trying to hit me when I'm obviously good at dodging you! If you just did something sensible, like knocking the ceiling down and shielding yourself with your arms, you would win easily! Trying to win this way is craziness!"

Doc Ock shouted, "And you're crazier! You just told me how to win!"

"Oops," said Peter. He really needed to buy that brain-to-mouth filter. Actually, since his life was a videogame, maybe he would get one if he raised his stats enough.

And then the ceiling was falling down. He lunged towards the window, but didn't quite make it before a huge chunk of…whatever the ceiling was made of…hit him in the head.

Everything went black.

/…/…/

Peter came to slowly. His first thought was, "It wasn't like this the last time."

There had been no "Game Over," no "You lost the game. Play again?" and no flash of white light. In fact, he couldn't remember anything since the moment he had been hit with a piece of ceiling. Also, he wasn't in the same situation he had been in a few minutes ago. Instead, he could see nothing but blackness and he was being slowly crushed by what was probably a heap of whatever the ceiling was made of. In short, none of this was anything like the last time he'd been reset.

Could it possibly be…

"I didn't die?" he murmured to himself. Was that even possible? He'd been sure he would die at least once against Ock. After all, he'd died twice against weaker foes. It only made sense. But then again, that piece of…whatever the ceiling was made of…had been the only thing to hit him hard enough to really hurt. He hadn't been shot. He hadn't broken any serious bones (unless more of this debris had broken some) and he definitely hadn't drowned. So. "I didn't die," he murmured again, this time more certain.

He'd been strong enough to face Doc Ock and walk away from it, perhaps beaten but still alive. He'd gotten stronger, and though he'd lost, he could still take Doc Ock down.

He grinned suddenly and in one sharp movement, lunged up and out of the pile of broken ceiling. He shouted, "Doc Ock didn't kill meeeeee!"

"Nice to know," muttered a policeman who was looking in at the wrecked room through the door with an eyebrow raised.

Peter glanced over. "Oh look, it's the friendly neighborhood law enforcement!" he said. "Hey, do you know where Doc Ock went? I still have to beat him up."

The policeman gave him a look. "You think you'll be able to? Looks to me like he beat you pretty bad."

"Yeah," said Peter. "But he didn't kill me." Which probably seemed extremely obvious to the policeman, but to Peter, it was anything but that. It was like a light in a dark tunnel, a revelation, a symphony. In other words, it felt pretty good (even though it left his body pretty sore).

"Well," said the policeman. "I don't know where he went. He just ran out on his four arms, leaving this scene behind him. Which reminds me. Come down to the station, we need to hear what happened here."

"Sorry, officer," said Peter. "But I got places to be. You'll have to make do with the quick summary: I fought him, he fought me, he knocked the ceiling down and ran away, I burst out of a pile of debris and ran away."

He paused. "Wait, that's not technically true yet. Well, it will be in a second. Bye-bye!"

With that, he leapt out the window and swung away. He had no time to waste with policemen. He didn't where Doc Ock was, and the man was probably wrecking buildings and putting people's lives in danger, or at the very least trying to rob a bank. For a moment he wondered if the people's lives actually mattered, since technically they all were just a part of a videogame. Probably neither he nor they were actually human. Did it matter if any of them lived or died, existed or ceased existing?

"Getting a little dark there, Spidey," he muttered to himself. "At the very least they're as human as you are. That's reason enough to save them for now. As for later…well…you'll work it out. You'll figure this out."

/…/…/

The good thing about being Spider-man, as opposed to being some other superhero, was not, as some might have supposed, being able to climb walls. There were a million super powers that could get you to the roof of a building without climbing walls, in addition to things like ladders and ropes. Nor was it his super strength, which was a super power so common that Peter pitied the superhero who didn't have at least a little of it. And it was not his webbing. Admittedly that had been inspired by his other spiderlike powers, but really it was an invention any enterprising scientist could have made and did not require him to be Spider-man at all.

No, the good thing about being Spider-man was spider sense. Because while the tens and maybe hundreds of other superheroes and supervillains and police and secret agents and such in the city had to rely on things like radio announcements and endless searching through warehouses to find their prey, Spider-man had it just a little bit easier. Sure, he had to be within range of the supervillain for his spider sense to start acting up, but once he was it was absolute gold.

This time, it took Peter two hours to get within range of Doc Ock, but for pretty much anyone else it would have been much more difficult. He'd been swinging over the city for hours, trying to get just a hint of the good Doc's location. The process took longer because his spider sense also alerted him to smaller incidents such as muggings (which he stopped) and people almost getting hit by cars (whom he rescued), but he was glad to be able to intervene in the smaller incidents as well, and eventually it led him to Doc Ock's hideout as he wished.

It happened as he swung over an apartment building. His spider sense twitched, just slightly. But he knew well enough to listen even to such a little twitch.

It paid off when he looked through the window of one of the apartments and saw Doc Ock himself sitting on the couch and watching the news.

"Go figure," he muttered to himself. "I search the city for this guy, and where is he? In his apartment. Stupid, Spidey. Stupid!" His only comfort was that apparently the cops hadn't gotten there yet either. Though it would have been nice for a change for the police to arrest a supervillain before Peter had to fight him. But that wasn't the way the world worked. Then again, it might not be their fault that they hadn't found him. For all Peter knew, it wasn't even Ock's apartment. He could have just snuck in the window and decided to hide there from the police and watch the news.

And either way, it didn't really matter except that if it wasn't Ock's apartment, Peter was going to make a mess of some perfectly innocent guy's apartment in the fight he was about to start. Pity. Well, Peter wasn't going to obsess over it (any more than he already had). He took a deep breath and leaped through the window with shattering glass falling on the floor all around him where he landed.

Doc Ock apparently had excellent reactions, because only about a second after Peter broke the window he was already on his feet, his mechanical arms raised defensively. "What the-Spider-man!"

"At your disservice," Peter said with a grin that unfortunately could not be seen through his mask. Ah well. He would just have to convey how much he was going to enjoy beating this man up with his voice.

Doc Ock made the first move, sending two arms swinging towards Peter's face, which Peter easily ducked. As he ducked, he rolled towards Doc Ock, intending to spring up at him after penetrating his guard, but when he tried the other two arms were waiting and bashed him back into the ground. He instead rolled between the doctor's legs and leapt onto the wall.

In minutes, he was once again dancing to avoid the four metal arms that were being waved at him sporadically.

"Ha!" Doc Ock spit out. "You see, even if you attack me again, you are still the same person you were earlier, and I can still defeat you just as easily."

"Yeah," said Peter. "I am still the same person. But you see, unlike some, I learn from experience."

"What's that supposed to mean?" the doctor shouted, grimacing in confusion. "I don't see you winning."

Peter would have liked very much to say, "Yeah, but I don't see you knocking the ceiling down on my head even though that's how you won earlier in this exact same situation." But he had indeed learned from experience. He had learned not to give your enemies advice on how to defeat you.

So instead he grinned and shot some webbing onto Doc Ock's glasses. "So what if you can't see me winning? At this point I bet you can't see anything at all!"

And that did seem to be the case. Doc Ock clawed at his glasses and face with his two real hands, and his mechanical arms were left flailing wildly. His guard was way, way down.

"Oops," said Peter. He slipped neatly between the flailing arms and punched Doc Ock in the face.

He didn't even have to do it that hard.

Ten minutes later, the unconscious Doc Ock's arms (the mechanical ones, but the real ones too) were wrapped in enough layers of webbing fluid that it would have been near impossible to rip it apart, and Peter was making a phone call to the police.

"Hello? Uh, I thought you should know Doc Ock's been taken care of. He's in this apartment building…Mhm, here's the address…he's gift wrapped and ready for you to pick up. Hope you don't mind that I'm not going to stick around to give him to you personally."

"Who, me? Oh, I'm nobody important. Just your friendly neighborhood Spider-man."

/…/…/

* * *

AN: I like Flash.

This chapter leaves me a little worried though, about how to write realistic fight scenes, particularly Peter's legendary snarking. If you have advice or criticism on this chapter, please review.

Next chapter...Peter dies again, and attempts to discover the elusive "instructions".


End file.
